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Good to see Cody Zeller announce that he has completed his degree through The Kelley School of Business and will be “walking” at this May’s graduation ceremony. He followed through as he said he would and has set a positive example for those who follow him.

He may have a degree in business, but he had no business going as high as he did in the draft.
And for the hype that surround his college recruitment (along with the many who implied he and his ‘movement’ were here for banners), it’s good that he’s “walking” for graduation because he certainly could never ‘March‘ with any deep impact.

“The NBA is complicated, the NBA is a business,” he said. “I’m getting back in shape. I’ll be back, whether it be the NBA or overseas.”

He is correct. A lot of under-the-table business(too much money not to be). I’ll take a healthy McGary over Zeller and Oladipo combined. Better vision, better in the post, quicker, better feet, higher motor. Injuries have set him back more than those silly weed-smoking bans.

Zeller and Oladipo will likely never know what it’s like to play in a ‘final’ anything. While McGary was putting the Wolverines on his back to get to a Final Four/Championship game, it was Zeller and Dipo throwing March gutter balls against Syracuse.

Strange how we measured Crean’s performance on his March Madness ceiling but keep apologizing for the overrated softness of his ‘lottery’ boys who could never play up to their talents in the Big Dance.
McGary exceeded expectations on the biggest stages of the game….

Oladipo proved his worth on big stages against Houston….He was beyond awful for most of the series. Most Thunder fans are left scratching their heads ….Did you watch the games? Did you listen to Reggie Miller repeatedly emphasizing to total lack of any supporting cast? Usually a top-5 pick gives you something.
The Thunder are looking like the most mismanaged organization in all of professional sports(maybe just second to the Bears)….

And Zeller is far more irrelevant in the NBA(especially, again, considering the hype/draft and expectations) than Noah Vonleh(someone Chet just said nobody cares about). Jordan is sure getting known for his lousy picks.

Wow, why such hostility toward one of our own native hoosiers and a successful Hoosier alumni? And why such a negative response to one of our own doing something positive? And do I sense a little class envy? Cody did it the right way, and let’s not forget he is the one player most responsible for leading IU out of the darkness and back to relevance. And finally, Michael Jordon thinks he’s a pretty good NBA player, otherwise he would not have signed him to a multi-year contract extension. But what does Jordon know, right!

Exactly. In fact, regardless of whether one feels they are over or underrated, name me a player since the One-and-Done Rule was implemented who stayed in college after being projected as a lottery pick (especially in the Top 5).

Seems to me like Cody’s business sense is quite honed. He left and got drafted at the highest point he possibly could have gone. He’s been a serviceable and reliable starter in the NBA. I don’t think anyone was claiming that the Hornets were getting the next Tim Duncan. He’s doing well.

There’s no hostility. I just do not care if he gets his degree or not. If he does ok. If he does not ok. I would probably care more that the individual from French Lick, Indiana when you turn down the street from the West Baden Hotel and French Lick Hotel; the kid who grew up in a run down home with windows open, no screens and curtains blowing outside that he could get a college degree than Cody Zeller or pretty much any other multi millionaire. Class envy or no class envy?

As a player Jordan knew he was unstoppable. What does he know as an owner? Not so much.
You don’t have to have ‘class envy’ to know Zeller and Oladipo left IU just as irrelevant in March Madness as before their arrival.
Rankings and cutting down nets after losses may make for relevance in the eyes of some fans more interested in Tommy Faye’s resume makeup than actual tournament success (e.g. Getting to a bracket level done by 9 other Midwestern teams over the last seven seasons…a.k.a Elite 8 appearance), but most know just how grossly overrated ALL Crean’s so-called lottery picks and lottery-filled teams. Compared to 9 other Midwestern teams within a tank of gas from Bloomington who were making Elite 8 and deeper trips, the Zeller and Dipo years were hardly more than farts in the wind.

BTW, gotta love Sean Miller with the assist in getting Ed Schilling to Bloomington. Obviously, Sean has a very strong interest in ensuring that the 5-star pipeline from Indiana to Westwood has been cut-off.

Not only being the brother of Sean, Archie was an assistant there. They are really happy for him getting the Indiana job and seem to take a lot of pride in the fact that Archie is doing so well. Let me qualify this, so all the people who will see this as some kind of threatening statement because we are not allowed to say that anyone that isn’t residing within the Hoosier state is worthy of any kind of praise when it comes to basketball. But the fans in Tucson are great. They are really supportive of most of their former coaches (that goofball Kevin O’Neil being the exception) and all of the players that came through McKale.

I hope Sean and Archie get the Home and Home series going. Would be a really fun game to look forward to in those two years.

Does anyone know if Indiana and Arizona have ever played? I don’t remember ever watching them. Certainly not in the last 20 years.

How can you not love a dude who can expertly ride a unicycle, bowls, and smokes ample amount of grass? He’s one reefer away from starring in ‘The Big Labowski.’ Wouldn’t doubt if he even enjoys the outdoors? And maybe he’s in no hurry to conquer the world by the age of thirty and play X-Box games for the last 50 years of his life? The young man sounds like he lives at the intersection of California and Colorado Avenues….And do they still call it grass, Bill Walton?

You boys keep getting your ‘highs’ over overrated NBA choir boys who have absolutely nothing in their history that will make for Hoosier reunions.

I think you care more about them failing than I do them succeeding. Seems that you get a little too much pleasure in the fact that they weren’t NBA superstars. Rooting for Hoosiers to fail? You can join all the other UK, Purdue, & rival Big Ten schools in your bacchanalia of Hoosier hate.

They’re rich. Isn’t that the definition of “success?” They defined it. I didn’t. It’s what the NBA is doing to define the purpose of college basketball.
Please, Double Down…They root for the only thing that matters; themselves. Everything hinges on a thick bank account. Basketball(especially in terms of the other four guys on the court) has long exited as any part of an equation.

I love Eric Gordon. Love what he’s done in Houston to come back from all those injuries. He’s a ton of fun to watch. Always was when he was healthy. I wish the Mets would hire his trainer vs the Civil War chop shop they have working on their once illustrious pitching staff.

I remember this clip of EJ destroying Greg Oden. He slashed past his defender, went head on into Oden and threw a tear drop layup over him that had to notify air traffic control.

Who is Eric Gordon? I seem to vaguely remember someone with that name playing at IU for a semester or so. Had a bum wrist, scored about 80% of his points on free throws, banked in a couple threes to win a game once.

Might sum it up for you. Before injuries that stymied his explosiveness to the rim, he’s twice the NBA player Oladisappointment will ever be. And he’s being considered for NBA’s ‘Best 6th Man’ and on a team still playing.
He was caught in the firestorm of an NCAA witch hunt. I’ll gladly remember the born and bred Indiana talent of EJ before the bogus investigation fueled by IU upon itself and grabbed by the Establishment NCAA to make an “example” out us. Go figure? Now they completely ignore academic fraud at UNC?

Nice to see you’re still interested in Hoosiers Harvard, Seahawk…Sorta figured you’ve always been quietly stalking. How’s the new baby? Did you name him Brandon…or, maybe, Roy….or Isaiah(after that Hoosier, Isiah Thomas, you love so much)? lol.
But more seriously….Nah.

DD- Glad to see you’re an EJ fan. There’s not very many. Hopefully, Houston will get a shot at your Warriors.

Double Down, you’re on a roll today. I agree with your comments about U of A. Great basketball fans, fun environment to watch a college BB game, and a fan base that has reasonable expectations and is loyal to their former players and coaches. I walk around with one of my Arizona hats on (provided annually by my daughter), and I hear “Bear Down” from all sorts of folks. Maybe it’s all that sunshine and warm weather.

Ugh… the mention of EJ makes me nauseous. I’ll never be able to erase from my memory his stunning, earth-shattering nine point performance in his last game as a Hoosier, a blowout against an inferior Arkansas team.

In 2007-2008, with all the turbulence in the program, we needed a true college superstar to put the team on his shoulders and use his breathtaking raw talent to salvage a few “dignity wins” for an embattled coach.

All is well here, taking care of a baby is a lot more fun than I imagined. I won’t tell you his name, but rest assured it isn’t a Husky name, nor is it a nouveau-WASP name like Colton, Jayden, Brayden or Jackson.

Because I live in SW Colorado the strange FCC regs say I have to get local news from Albuquerque, which I don’t care about, instead of Denver, which affects me. Consequently, I hear news concerning the UNM Lobos. They were discussing naming rights to their arena.

Hoosier fans should never be bothered by the name Simon Skjodt being attached to Assembly Hall. UNM is coming off a contract in which their arena bore the name ‘Wise Pies’.

EJ’s performance was nearly as disappointing as narrowly losing to Boilermakesr in the NCAA tournament. I don’t know how any fan of basketball can live with losing to those sorry Lafayette mutts of no banners(unless, you don’t have any yourself, off course). How deep did the greatest Husky basketball team in the history of U-Dub get? A stunning Round of 32 appearance?

EJ’s injured wrist performance could even be classified as nearly as disappointing as a perfectly healthy Terrence Jones not showing up for the game that secures the pain of having Tom Crean appear as Mr. “We’re Back.” Hard to imagine how many t-shirts don’t get printed if the standout from Seattle doesn’t play like a zombie extra in ‘Night of the Living Dead.’ Many define that game as ‘The Watford Shot’….I tend to define it as ‘The Jones Not that Gives a Decade ofTom Crean Rot.’ Many thanks to Seattle. He sure made Calipari’s good buddy in Bloomington look like quite the miracle worker.

Has a Purdue team or U-Dub every taken home the ultimate prize?…..Some of the more seasoned Hoosier basketball fans may remember all the glorious hoopla surrounding the Damon Bailey years. Damon could never bring the Hoosiers the big pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. In Damon’s final season, it was those damn Razorbacks who took home their only National Championship…. Damon scored 10 points in his final NCAA tournament game against perennial blue blood powerhouse, Boston College. Sure, he had no big NBA offers….He stayed in college. He barely broke double figures in his last donning of the candy stripes. He remains a hero. Gordon remains a goat……primarily because he played for a non-white coach he adored. How would you like to play your final game with Dan Dakich as your coach?

Review: National Championships

Razorbacks Basketball: 1 + (5 Final Fours)
Purdue Basketball: 0 + (2 Final Fours…Last Final Four in 1980)
U. of Washington: 0 + (1 Final Four….1953 was the year of the ‘short-short-shorts’)

Harv, I’m going to say this without the slightest bit of sarcasm. 100% empathy. Truly.

I think it is super effing sad that you see the Kentucky game this way. I don’t care what one thinks about Tom Crean. That really was an incredible moment. 18k fans blowing the roof off the place, Don Fisher just losing his mind on one of his greatest calls, showing a national audience that the Hoosiers have a passion unmatched passion for hoops and the much maligned VJIII and almost as maligned Watford combine to make that magical moment happen.

It isn’t the Kentucky game. I’m sorry you feel the need to crap on the few good moments we had in the past 9 years. Buddy, it’s kind of a bummer. I think everyone here understands that the 2011-2012 team pales in comparison to 1976, 1981, 1987 or even 1993. Your snark towards Oladipo and Zeller doesn’t upset me, it is just a little sad. You’re pissed they left early. You think they’re representative of a “me first” mentality, which is destroying the “purity” of the college game. You see them as sellouts who don’t embody the spirit of the name on the front of their jerseys.

Everyone here equally cares about the Indiana Hoosiers. The passion overfloweth. I love coming here and hearing stories from people that predated me, recanting the stories of games and moments from some of the Hoosier greats. No one has ever argued that anything that has happened in the last 9 years competes with the golden age in Indiana basketball.

Anyway, just want you to know how it comes across. I understand that you love being a contrarian. You’re a smart guy and I’m sure you know that. I just want you to know I think it is a bummer. Not that one can’t express frustration, or point out issues here and there (heavens knows that I have). But you express these opinions like an artillery barrage with the rest of us commenters sitting in the trenches in the Somme. After a while, we’re just left shaking and drooling uncontrollably–ok, I lied, just a little sarcasm ;).

I was attracted to Indiana basketball and midwestern values because of its heart, humble smarts and optimism. Not cynicism and an unrequited, whitewashed nostalgia for the past. A backward looking appeal to an impossible ideal, which can never be matched because things aren’t like they used to be. Then again, I’m just a soft hippie Californian who thinks we can all just get along.

Sorry….to bum you out, Double Down. I’m far more in the camp of NoMendacity. I will gladly admit that every big Hoosier win under ‘Bozo’ felt like watching Donald Trump holding up his signed executive orders in front of a camera…..
Every moment Crean had a big victory, he had to use that moment to bitch slap the “wreckers” of Indiana University. Do you see similarities on the national political stages?
I could never buy into the man. Some get nauseous at the mentioning of Eric Gordon’s name. I got nauseous at looking at Zeller’s glowing blue cross on his twitter page. These people made Indiana into an easy avenue for agendas that had nothing to do with basketball and banners.
I had a difficult time buying into anyone who would want to play for such a fraud ….Believe me, I tried to support the troops. I would have loved them to simply not show up for practice one day …..I would have loved for just one of those guys to have seen the real ‘light’……

Claim you’re a better man for supporting it all. I tend to side with kids who were sleeping in cars rather than those who want to use them as targets for hatred…. We all know those young men were never prepared for the rigors of college classrooms. We all knew that Sampson was hated for far more than a 3-way calling habit. You want me to be honest? You better take a good hard look in your own mirror.

I’ve largely ignored you since your banning. For about ten min, you came back and had something to contribute. You are nothing like Nomendacity. You’re just a one note artist of anger. Dunno what Trump has to do about watching teenagers play a game.

This isn’t about your views. It’s about you and your one note assault. You’re a one man, vuvuzelea symphony. You say the same thing over and over and you did it loudly, while always calling others out for their lack of virtue.

I look in the mirror regularly. But this isn’t about me. This is about you. The man who can’t stop obsessing about a man who is no longer the coach of his favorite team. The man who can’t find enough metaphors and YouTube videos to highlight his target’s awkward personal quirks. We’re at the dawn of a new glorious day of Hoosier basketball, yet it’s all Crean, all day with you.

You can’t even help yourself that some people want to talk football. Good discussions happen there, and you have to jump in and ruin threads with your “you people don’t love basketball enough trope…because Crean is a Bozo…F’s……Crean…”.

It’s about me…It’s about you…It’s about Kelvin…It’s about wreckers…It’s about saints….It’s about tempered expectations…It’s about empty hype….It’s about all the appearances of collusion to acquire power….It’s about Joey’s little innocent letter….It’s about committee rooms…It’s about Fred the Dictator….It’s about keeping Indiana Basketball’s coach just good enough to never usurp the power of the AD. It’s about a lot of things. It’s about an ESPN Establishment refusing to talk of academic fraud and fake transcripts at a UNC held up as a ‘chosen one’ example of ‘great coach’ and ‘great institution.’ And you’re right…It’s about Crean in his best fraudulent existence slobbering all over UNC and their program as a model of excellence in the backdrop of what he painted upon the evil at Indiana when he arrived in Bloomington.

Because it’s Indiana? My ass. Because it’s using our institution of basketball like a trained tiger stripped of its true heart and nature so Siegfried & Roy can sell a few tickets to suckers at a freak show? You betcha.

Archie? Just another pawn in Fred’s brilliant ‘just good enough’ schemes to hold onto power. Basketball in Indiana is power. To get a truly top coach for our institution steals too much power away from the lawyers, the dictators, the funneled off money from building contracts, the machine of mirages painting success on mediocre results. Tom Crean hired Fred Glass. Why should he still hold his power? Because Crean is a brilliant businessman but a horrific coach? Give me a break.

Bailey was a four-year starter for Bob Knight and the Indiana Hoosiers from 1990–1994. In Bailey’s first three seasons (1990–93), he and the Hoosiers posted 87 victories, the most by any Big Ten team in a three-year span, breaking the mark of 86 set by Knight’s Indiana teams of 1974-76. Teams from these three seasons spent all but two of the 53 poll weeks in the top 10, and 38 of them in the top 5. They captured two Big Ten crowns in 1990–91 and 1992–93, and during the 1991–92 season reached the Final Four. During the 1992–93 season, the 31-4 Hoosiers finished the season at the top of the AP Poll, but were defeated by Kansas in the Elite Eight.

EJ spent slightly over one semester at IU. Despite having D. J. White and Armon Bassett, Jordan Crawford, and Jamarcus Ellis as teammates they stumbled to a third place finish in the Big Ten losing their first game in both the conference tournament and the NCAA tournament.

And congrats to Isaiah Thomas’s coming out party on the Celtics. He’s sure tearing it up…even in the face of true heartbreak. It’s a shame it will have to end against Cleveland. But, then, you’re a fan of that team too. Do you have anyone you don’t cheer for…other than EJ?

You defend EJ’s colossal flop as a Hoosier by pointing out UW and Purdue’s lack of championships? That’s the weirdest form of reasoning I’ve seen in my life by someone not named Sean Spicer. Nice try.

At any rate, fun to relive old skirmishes. Seems like you’ve been watching some NBA lately? Little Isaiah sure is amazing; never thought he would be this good in the NBA to be honest. Hopefully the Cavs will dispatch the Celts, but doesn’t really matter in the end since the “Du(m)bs” are going to win it all.